TOYOTA GAZOO Racing World Rally Team will set its sights on securing another home victory when Rally Japan takes place on a new earlier date of May 28-31 to host round seven of the 2026 FIA World Rally Championship.
TGR-WRT returns to Japan looking to conclude what has so far been a successful first half of the campaign, including five wins from the opening six rallies. It leads the manufacturers’ championship by 93 points and has all five of its drivers inside the top six of the drivers’ championship standings.
Currently leading the championship is Elfyn Evans, who won Rally Japan for the team in both 2023 and 2024 and has a 12-point advantage over his nearest competitor, his Japanese team-mate Takamoto Katsuta.
Katsuta is set to receive a hero’s welcome as he returns to home roads after achieving his first two WRC victories earlier this season in Kenya and Croatia, and will aim to add to the Rally Japan podium he achieved in 2022.
Oliver Solberg is third in the championship, 31 points from the lead, having started this year with a famous Rallye Monte-Carlo victory. He starts Rally Japan in Rally1 machinery for the first time, having won his class with the GR Yaris Rally2 car in 2025. Sami Pajari scored his maiden WRC podium in Japan last November and has since achieved four more, and sits fifth in the standings. Reigning and nine-time world champion Sébastien Ogier rounds out the top six having taken victory at Rally Islas Canarias in one of four starts so far this year.
TGR WRC Challenge Program driver Yuki Yamamoto will be another competing on home roads, driving one of seven GR Yaris Rally2 cars entered into the WRC2 class. Spaniard Alejandro Cachón returns to Rally Japan after winning the category in 2025 and is joined by fellow MSi Racing Team drivers Diego Domínguez and Andrea Lafarja of Paraguay. Hiroki Arai, Norihiko Katsuta and Fumio Nutahara, frontrunners in the Japanese Rally Championship, also compete in their home event.
Since it returned to the WRC calendar in 2022, Rally Japan has been held mostly on narrow and twisting asphalt roads in the forest-covered mountains of the Aichi and Gifu prefectures, around the city of Nagoya. The move from November to late May should bring higher temperatures, but the chance for rain – which has added to the challenge in previous editions – remains.
While the Toyota Stadium continues to host the service park, the rally will this year visit Nagoya itself for the first time with a ceremonial start at the city’s historic castle on Thursday evening, following shakedown that morning at Kuragaike Park.
Friday is focused on a loop of three stages run twice in the mountains east of Toyota City, starting with the new Asuke test and also including the iconic Isegami’s Tunnel. Saturday is the longest day of the rally, taking crews north-east for a trio of stages repeated in the reverse order after a tyre-fitting zone at Enakyo Park. Two passes of a new super special stage at Fujioka round out the day. Sunday once more takes place mainly to the south-east, with twin passes of the familiar Nukata and Lake Mikawako tests separated by two runs around a Kuragaike super special.
Quotes:
Jari-Matti Latvala (Team Principal)
“We’re looking forward to returning to Rally Japan in what has been a very strong season so far for our team. We were maybe a bit unlucky on the last rally in Portugal, but it’s difficult in any sport to be invincible, and we like to see such strong competition because it makes the victories feel even better. It will be interesting to see Rally Japan running earlier in the year than usual, as the temperatures will be higher and this could affect the tyre behaviour and the grip levels for the drivers. We’ve seen the rally growing in popularity every year and I’m sure we will see even more support this year after Takamoto’s wins earlier this season, which will also make it easier for him to go to his home rally and challenge for that victory that he really wants. Of course, Taka’s team-mates have also all been strong on asphalt recently, and they too will want to win.”
